As federal law enforcement personnel from at least three agencies swarmed a manufacturing facility in upstate New York in September, a Border Patrol agent spotted a pallet of nutrition bars from the brand That’s It.
“Oh man,” he said. “That’s It bars? My Costco run is going to be fucked.”
The agent seemed to know what was about to happen. One by one, workers in the plant were rounded up and told to sort themselves by citizenship status. Agents then questioned each suspected unauthorized immigrant in a hot, over-capacity break room.
By the end of the raid, agents had used an unusual form of administrative warrant to question, and ultimately detain, 57 workers — over one-third of the people present that day — on allegations of being illegally present in the United States. Many have now been removed from the country; at least one person arrested at the plant was later deported by mistake, the government acknowledged.
The raid, as another agent put it, was “a shitshow.”
